Mac in your life

We ended 2000 the way we began it, with Mac McCaughan augmenting our lineup. Portastatic played with us in at our last two shows of the year, in Providence and Northampton, the latter 14 years ago today. Mac did double duty, sitting in on our entire set, and much of the encore too. (In fact, we had the whole band up there with us for a raucous “Group Grope.”) By my rough estimate, we’ve shared the stage with Mac somewhere around 30 times, and that doesn’t include the time I borrowed his just-out-of-the-box Fender Deluxe, turned it up to 10, and recorded the solo for Portastatic’s version of “St. Elmo’s Fire.”